Speak Up On Immigration

The Senate compromise that apparently was agreed to today is only one step in the legislative process. The House and Senate bills will have to be finalized and reconciled in conference, and the resulting bill voted on in both chambers. So the battle is far from over. Now is the time when we need to make ourselves heard.

We know that this site, and others like it, are very widely read by Congressmen, Senators and their staffs (as well as by many members of the executive and judicial branches). They read conservative web sites to stay in touch with what the conservative base is thinking–in Washington, I’m afraid that Congressmen are more likely to encounter lobbyists than conservatives. So let’s make ourselves heard, whatever our views may be: this is a subject on which rational people can disagree.

We’ve put up a poll on Power Line News. The question is, “What should be our highest priority in formulating policies on immigration?” There are eight possible responses. We tried to make the poll valuable by avoiding the usual pitfall: slanted questions and answers that turn the survey into a push-poll. We tried to phrase the question and all of the answers fairly, so that each answer is a plausible response. Our hope is to get a more meaningful and nuanced picture of conservative opinion on the subject of immigration than is currently available, for the benefit of Congressmen. Especially Republican Congressmen.

In my opinion, there are several good answers. You can vote once per day. If you think multiple answers deserve equal support, you can divide your support by voting more than once. Or, of course, you can vote once per day for the same response. We’ll probably run the poll for around a week. It should be interesting to see the results.